


hell, i'm just a kid myself (how'm i gonna raise one?)

by ProbablyVoldemort



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Character Tags In Order Of Appearance, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The 100 (TV) Season 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyVoldemort/pseuds/ProbablyVoldemort
Summary: Murphy had been on the ground for only a couple of months, but he'd already been falsely accused of murder, hung, banished, imprisoned, and tortured.And now he apparently had a kid.Why did that seem so much more terrifying?
Comments: 40
Kudos: 87





	1. the kid

**Author's Note:**

> I would just like to preface this by saying I genuinely have no idea where this fic is going. I was the passenger for a four hour drive home from uni the other day and the idea just hit me and I wrote most of this first chapter.
> 
> Other than that, I've got a few scenes planned out but otherwise I have no idea what's going to happen in this fic. It'll mostly follow the plot of canon, I do know that, except Murphy will just have a kid. Other than that, though, your guess for this fic's trajectory is as good as mine.
> 
> I honestly cannot tell you what the update schedule for this will be. I wanna focus on my other fic Darling (also featuring Murphy in a parental position if you're interested in checking it out) but I've been really into this one in the last few days. So definitely don't expect super frequent updates, but the second chapter could be soonish since I've written a good chunk of it already.
> 
> Rating may go up to mature once I figure out what I'm doing with this just so y'all are aware.
> 
> Title is from Kenny Chesney's There Goes My Life.
> 
> The fic starts off in season 1 with Murphy banished and in Grounder prison, if that's not as clear as it could be in the fic.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

There was a routine.

The Grounders came in and dragged him out. In the first week or so, he’d pleaded with them to leave him alone. By now, he’d learned that all the pleading in the world wouldn’t stop them, so he spat insults instead. When they finally killed him, he was going to make sure that his last words weren’t going to be some pathetic begging for his life.

They dragged him out. Usually hit him a few times before they made it where they were going.

And then they reached The Room.

There, things happened that he didn’t think about outside of The Room or his nightmares.

Once they were done with him, they brought him back and threw him into his cell. Usually, he was unconscious at this point. He assumed the Grounders took lunch. He was sure even monsters like them needed to eat once in a while.

Later, after he’d woken up and assessed his most recent injuries, they returned.

For them.

If it was just her, he’d stay silent, make eye contact with her as they dragged her out of her cell and gave her a sharp nod.

He wasn’t fond of her, but when there were only so many people you saw who weren’t constantly torturing you, you made alliances where you could.

To be fair, she wasn’t fond of him, either. She ignored him most of the time, steering clear of the shared wall of their cells. Occasionally she’d sneer at him, call him _Skaikru_ and spit at his feet.

They weren’t friends, but she was the closest to one he had in this hellhole.

Most times, though, they wouldn’t just grab her. Instead, they’d grab them both. 

Her and the kid.

Murphy didn’t spend much time around kids before the Grounders had grabbed him. He didn’t spend much time around kids now, either, because the kid didn’t do much other than cling to her mother and cry. He didn’t know how old she was, but she was small. Tiny. If he had to guess, he’d place her at three, maybe four. Definitely far too young to be stuck in a grounder prison.

If they just took the woman, he’d meet her eye and nod as they dragged her away, a silent promise to watch out for the kid until she returned.

But when they took them both…

There was a special place in hell reserved for people who tortured kids. 

Sure, he’d threatened to kill Charlotte, but he wouldn’t have. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d have done if he’d caught her, but he wasn’t going to kill her. He knew that, at least. He was a dick, sure, but he didn’t kill people.

He was just pissed that no one else seemed to think that, that they were so quick to hang him without question and then just let the actual murderer go.

He wouldn’t have killed her.

But these people, these Grounders, they had no problem torturing a little girl, a baby practically, for whatever information her mother wouldn’t or couldn’t give up.

Murphy wasn’t making it out of here alive. He already knew that. He was already convinced every time they took him to The Room, he wouldn’t make it back to his cell.

He was going to die. Probably sooner than later.

So when they took them both, he couldn’t just sit there.

“Hey,” he called, pushing himself up against the wall. He yelled again, louder, almost screaming to be heard over the kid’s screams as they tried to pull her from her mother. “Hey, dick for brains! Wanna know what I did last night? Your mom!”

They scowled at him but didn’t do much else, so he sighed. Time to get creative.

He’d gotten really good at picking out what would offend each of their torturers the most. Scarface got offended when he talked about butt stuff. Beard didn’t like it when he implied that his mom was super into it. Eyepatch just found him super annoying and any time he talked about anything more than five minutes ended with a fist to the face and usually waterboarding. Eyepatch was fond of waterboarding. Murphy wasn’t fond of Eyepatch.

It didn’t always work. Sometimes they were too fast. Sometimes his insults and insinuations didn’t hit quite right or he was still passed out and only woke up after they were gone.

Today, though, Eyepatch was on shift and released the kid, snapping something at the others, and then they were in his cell again, yanking him up from the ground.

He met her eye as they dragged him away, still spitting insults, and she nodded at him. He nodded back and closed his eyes, thinking of the first time he smelled nature and the first time he felt the rain. It was pointless to try to put himself somewhere else, but try he did.

Maybe this time they’d actually kill him, and this would finally be over.

He woke up back in his cell. The kid was huddled in the far corner, clutching the bars. Her mother wasn’t there, and Murphy sighed, closing his eyes again.

Not dead. Not yet.

Close though. He was missing all his fingernails now, not just half, so that was cool.

He pulled himself up and against the back wall, gritting his teeth against the pain that small action sent through him.

He’d saved the kid today, at least. They hadn’t killed him yet, but the kid didn’t get hurt. Little victories.

_“Mama, Mama, Mama.”_

Murphy peeled his eyes open at the murmur, rolling his neck against the cramps from sleeping against the wall.

He glanced over into the next cell, where the kid was shaking her mom’s arm, whimpering and crying.

“Hey,” he called, and she glanced up at him for a moment before returning to her whispering and shaking. Her mom didn’t move, crumpled in a heap on the ground where the Grounders had dropped her at whatever point they’d returned her.

He let her continue, picking at a scab on his arm instead. The kid refused to look at him most days, refused to look or move away from her mother. He didn’t blame her. He dreaded the unlikely future where he’d one day see a mirror again. There wasn’t anything he could do to help her and her mom. He wasn’t doing much better.

He tuned the kid out, daydreaming about a world where no one murdered Wells fucking Jaha and he wasn’t stuck in a fucking Grounder prison. In this dream world, he also had a dog. He was going to have a dog in his dream world because he was going to die in the real world without ever having seen a real dog.

Because that was how life was.

He opened his eyes again hours or minutes later when they brought the food, tossing it through the bars and into the dirt and yelling something at them in the Grounder language he still hadn’t learned. He waited for them to leave and then pulled himself across the cell, his body hurting too much to move in anything more than an embarrassing half crawl. More embarrassing was how quickly he shoveled the few bites of dirty meat from the ground into his mouth, the bit of food doing nothing to quell his hunger, only enough to keep him alive until the next day.

He was crawling back to his corner when he noticed the lack of movement in the cell next to him, the kid still huddled up against her mother’s unmoving body, calling for her in an endless mumbled.

“Fuck,” he muttered, then changed course, heading for their shared wall.

“Hey,” he called, pulling himself up against the bars. “Hey, kid. How’s your mom doing?”

Why had they dropped her so far away? The cells weren’t even that big. How had they managed to drop her in the one place he wouldn’t be able to reach through and grab her, tugging her closer so maybe he could help?

The kid ignored him, curling closer to her mom, and he sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face.

“You should eat,” he told her, leaning heavily against the wall of the cell. “You should try to eat something.”

She was dead.

Murphy was almost positive that the woman was dead. It’d been three days since he’d seen her move so chances were she was dead.

_Fuck._

He hadn’t seen the kid eat in a while, either. Her scraps of food were piling up inside the door and she never moved away from her mom, at least not while he was conscious.

He’d promised her he’d look after the kid. Not in so many words, but they had an agreement. Keep the kid out of The Room and keep an eye on her when her mother was gone.

She was back, but at the very least she was unconscious. She was still gone.

The kid had to eat.

“Hey,” he called, and her face popped up on the other side of her mom. 

Murphy tried to smile at her, the underused muscles tugging at the cuts on his face. He probably looked terrifying, even if you didn’t factor in the dirt and the blood and his one eye that was currently too swollen to open. He shouldn’t be smiling at a child, not looking the way he looked, but it wasn’t like there was another option.

“You should eat something,” he told her, and she ignored him, dropping back down and curling up against her mom. “Your mom would want you to eat.”

He kept talking. He told the kid about life in space and on the ground. He recited stories he vaguely remembered from classes on the Ark. He sang songs, offkey and offbeat. His throat started to ache, not used to talking anywhere near this much, but he didn’t stop.

The woman used to whisper to the kid. He’d never figured out what she was saying, but she was always talking. He’d liked to imagine it was promises for a better future, about a someday not too far away where they were free and safe.

He’d liked imagining that she was talking to him, too.

Now she was gone. Even if she wasn’t dead yet, she would be soon. The Grounders didn’t seem too concerned with getting them medical attention.

She was gone, and the kid was stuck in silence.

So he talked.

Murphy was a light sleeper. He’d been one even back on the Ark, back when his parents were alive and he’d had nothing to worry about. Any little noise woke him from his sleep.

It’d been annoying, back then. Now it kept him alive.

He woke to the sound of the other cell opening, and he watched them enter the cell from his spot against the bars. One of them shouted orders at the others, and someone crouched down next to the woman.

The kid screamed immediately, clinging to her mother, and another of the guards was ordered to move her, which resulted with the kid latching onto her arm with her teeth.

Murphy’s heart jumped to his throat as the Grounder batted her off, the kid tumbling back to the ground with another scream.

“Hey!” he yelled, eyes flicking between Grounders. Who would be easiest to get to redirect the group’s attention onto him? “Scarface! Yeah, you! I saw your mom this morning. Yeah, she wanted my dick up her ass again, so I—”

He went on, pouring everything he could into a narrative that barely made sense. One day, they were going to chop off his dick. He knew it. There was only so long he could taunt them with fucking their moms before they cut it off. It was probably going to be today.

But, fuck, it could be today if that meant he got the kid even just one more day.

He was still conscious when they dragged him back to his cell, but barely. It was unfortunate, really. He would much rather be feeling nothing than every fucking gouge they’d carved into him today.

He was awake enough to notice that the woman hadn’t moved. Neither had the kid, except to poke her head up to watch them bring him in.

They tossed him on the ground and left again, and he watched through half closed eyes as Beard pulled the door shut. Crooked Nose snapped something at him, and he turned around and snapped something back before following her away.

Without locking the door.

Murphy didn’t move. He couldn’t if he wanted to, it hurt too much, but he didn’t dare even try.

It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake, right? Beard would realize he’d forgotten to lock the door and he’d be back any minute to fix the mistake and probably get in a few more punches.

This didn’t mean anything.

He should sleep. He should let the pain and the exhaustion take over and knock him out. He should try to encourage the kid to go to the food that was piling up and actually eat something. He should do something.

But all he could do was sit there, half up against the bars, half collapsed on himself, and stare at the door.

Beard didn’t come back.

Limp came by, hours later, with the scraps of their dinner, tossing the pieces through the bars and into the dirt, yelling something in the Grounder language at them.

He didn’t check the locks.

Murphy pulled himself up a little more, a tiny bit of hope lodging itself in his throat. This could be it. This could be his chance.

“Hey,” he called into the next cell as he half crawled towards the front of his cell. “Kid, eat up.”

He shoveled his own food down quickly and then crawled back, not wanting to be caught too close to the front.

And then he waited. He watched and he waited.

Until the light from outside the small window faded completely, leaving them in darkness save for the torch further down a hallway.

Until the last of the night patrols passed.

He waited a little longer, just to be safe.

And then he was pulling himself up, standing unsteadily on his feet for the first time in fuck knows how long. He held onto the bars as he walked, regaining his balance, and slowly moved towards the front of his cell.

He pressed on the bars, breath caught in his throat. It swung open, and Murphy could have sobbed if he wasn’t so fucking terrified that he’d be caught at any moment.

His first step into the hallway was shaky, filled with terror and hope and excitement.

He glanced down the hallway. The left led to The Room and, presumably, no exit. No, freedom was to the right.

He stepped left, turning around and tugging on the other cell door.

Locked.

The kid was awake, tucked into her mother’s side and staring at him with her big green eyes.

Murphy swallowed heavily, glancing over his shoulder. There never seemed to be many—if any—guards on duty at night, but he was on a time limit here. There were so many things that could go wrong and he should just leave.

He glanced back in the cell.

But the kid.

 _Fuck_.

He shook his head, gripping the bars. He had to get out. He had to leave. He had to survive and be safe. He should leave. He should fucking leave.

_But the kid._

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, searching the ground for anything he could use to pick the lock. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He found a stick and sent up a prayer to any god that may or may not exist as he stuck it into the lock.

The kid was watching him still, but he couldn’t look at her, just stared at the lock as he moved the stick around, like he had any fucking idea what he was doing, like he’d ever picked a lock before in his life.

There was a sound, one he recognized, and he froze, hardly daring to hope as he pulled on the door.

And then it was opening.

He closed his eyes for a moment in relief, but a moment was all he had, and then he was creeping inside.

The kid was still watching him, wide eyed, and he pressed a finger against his lips. There were so many ways this could go wrong. If he couldn’t even get the kid out without her screaming the place down, they were both as good as dead.

Her eyes stayed on him as he crouched down, moving the finger from his lips to her mom’s neck, pressing it and another against the skin.

She was cold.

He didn’t even have to wait to find a heartbeat to know she was long dead.

He closed his eyes again, both in relief and disappointment. He’d figured she was dead. Hoped she wasn’t, but there wasn’t much use for hope here.

Her being dead made it easier, though. If she hadn’t been dead, he’d have to make decisions he didn’t want to. Decisions that would only have one real answer that would eat at him forever.

He knew she’d want him to save the kid. Alive or not, all they’d been doing was keeping the kid as safe as she could be in a place like this. If she’d been alive, she’d want him to leave her and take the kid, get her out of this place and keep her safe.

If she’d been alive, he’d have had to decide to leave her to die.

But she was already dead, so that was one decision out of the way.

“You have to be quiet, okay?” he whispered to the kid, pulling his hand away from the woman. “We’re getting out of here, but we have to be quiet.”

He expected her to scream as he pulled her away from her mom, but all she did was whimper. Maybe even someone as young as her understood that her mom was gone and that this was serious, that making it out of here alive depended on her silence. Maybe she was just tired and hurt and hungry and she’d run out of the energy to scream.

Either way, Murphy didn’t complain, just tucked her tightly against his chest and started hurrying through the prison.

The lone guard on duty was asleep, slumped against the wall. Murphy’s heart beat in his ears as he crept past, gripping the kid even tighter.

And then they’d made it outside into the night and he was breathing in fresh air for the first time in fuck knows how logn.

He didn’t stop to appreciate it, hurrying for the trees, not knowing or caring where they were or where they’d end up as long as it was anywhere but here. He could taste freedom, hope he’d long since thought he’d abandoned threatening to burst out of him.

He kept running, even as his legs burned and threatened to give out. He kept running, even as his lungs seized and breathing grew hard. He kept running, even though he’d lost his shoes so long ago he could barely remember having had any in the first place and the pain from the new cuts from sprinting barefoot through the forest piled onto the pain from the coals his feet had been stuck in just days ago until he stopped feeling the pain altogether.

He kept running, until the sun was rising and he couldn’t anymore.

Until there was a cave, a break between two rocks, small enough that you couldn’t see in from the outside but seemingly large enough to hide in.

He crawled inside, knees buckling once he stopped forcing them to move, gripping the walls of the cave as he moved. The kid was already asleep by the time he deemed them hidden enough and collapsed on the ground.

He wanted to stay awake. He wanted to make sure they were really safe, that no one had tracked them this far, that they weren’t going to be killed in their sleep.

But he was so exhausted and in so much pain, that his eyes betrayed him and he was passed out in mere moments.

When he woke hours or minutes or days later, the kid was tucked up against him, hands gripping the tattered remains of his shirt tightly and eyes wide as she stared at him, and Murphy was struck with a sudden realization.

He was all this kid had now. Her mother was gone. He had no way of tracking down any other family she might have. She had nothing.

Except him.

Which meant he had a kid now.

How the hell was he supposed to take care of a kid?


	2. the rabbit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with a chapter two!
> 
> I read on something a bit ago that Murphy was only held captive by the Grounders for three days? Seems fake so we're gonna ignore that. I haven't watched season 1 in a while (it's something I need to do while writing this fic though so a rewatch will probs be coming soon) but I can pretty much guarantee that the whole timeline of season one will be being stretched out because it's more fun that way. But for now, the Murphy was definitely held prisoner for a lot more than three days. The specifics will be discussed more in this chapter and the next, but it's definitely more than three days.
> 
> Also thank you for all the name suggestions and things you want to see! The kid has been named (in my head not in the fic itself yet) and I've taken your thoughts in a note and will be consulting them as I plan this fic.
> 
> That's about it, so I hope y'all enjoy!

The first thing Murphy did upon waking up was cry. 

He curled in on himself and sobbed until he couldn’t anymore. He cried for all the pain he was feeling, for everything that had happened to him. He cried in relief for finally being free.

The Murphy from before would’ve been embarrassed. He would’ve killed anyone who’d seen him like this and denied anything that so much as suggested he had feelings.

But that was before.

Before the hanging. Before the exile. Before the kidnapping and the torture and the losing his mind.

Now he was just tired. So fucking tired. So who cared if he cried?

The exhaustion caught up with him once he’d run out of tears and could breathe properly again, and he felt like he could sleep for a year.

And he might’ve. He might’ve curled back up and slept some more, repeating the cycle of sleeping and crying until something made him move or he died.

But, as the despair and the fear and the sadness faded into exhaustion, he finally registered the touch on his head. It was soft and awkward, somewhere between stroking and patting, and he forced open the one eye that wasn’t too swollen to do so.

The kid stared back, lying on her side and hugging herself with the arm that wasn’t still half patting his head.

“Thanks, kid,” he whispered, voice a harsh croak. The kid pulled her hand away, wrapping it around herself. Murphy sighed, grimacing in pain as he pulled himself up to sit against the wall of the cave. “What’s the plan?”

The kid didn’t say anything, but she mirrored him, sitting next to him and still staring at him, always staring, with her big green eyes.

What was the plan? What were they going to do now?

They had to find somewhere to live. They had to figure out how to clean their injuries before they got any more infected than they almost definitely already were. They had to find food and water and clothes that were more than just torn up rags.

A rumble came from the kid, and Murphy looked back at her. Her stare was off him, looking down at her own stomach instead, and Murphy huffed out half a laugh.

“Guess that settles it,” he said, and she looked at him again. He offered her a smile, then dropped it again as he felt his lip split open. “Let’s go find some breakfast.”

Breakfast was, unsurprisingly, not as easy as it sounded. 

For one, it took the better part of an hour just for Murphy to be able to stand. Whatever insane adrenaline he’d been running on the night before—or days before? How long had they slept after reaching the cave?—had long since disappeared and he could feel every one of his injuries.

His feet, in particular, were pretty bad. There were the burns from the coals from not too long ago that would’ve been bad enough, but he’d also managed to massively tear them up while running through the woods. So that was fun. He added finding shoes to his mental to do list.

Once he was finally able to stand, moving was slow going. The kid was on his hip, hands clutching his shirt, because she’d refused to stand up and he wasn’t about to leave her in some random cave that he’d probably never be able to find again. She barely weighed anything, but the added weight wasn’t doing anything good for how much it hurt to move.

Not to mention how they didn’t even have anything to kill an animal with, let alone the strength or speed necessary to do so, or that other than Pike’s dumbass refresher course, Murphy hadn’t been in an Earth Skills class since he was twelve and thus had no idea what plants were edible and which ones would kill them.

At this point, breakfast was looking more like a crazy dream than anything actually achievable.

If he’d learned anything this morning, it was that he and the kid weren’t going to make it on their own. At the very least not until he was healed.

“I know some people,” he told the kid, eyeing some berries that were probably poisonous. Or edible. Who was he to judge? “They won’t be happy to see me, but I look like shit and you’re pretty cute. I think we could probably convince them to let us stay until we’re not hurt anymore.”

The kid didn’t say anything, but Murphy wasn’t expecting her to.

He really didn’t want to go back to the Dropship. He didn’t want to face fucking Bellamy and Clarke and have to beg them to let them stay after they’d treated him like absolute shit. He didn’t want to have to look at the tree where the people he’d thought were his friends had hung him. He didn’t want them to make good on their promise to kill him if he came back.

But he had the kid. He had to think about the kid. As bad as going back to the Dropship was for his survival, it was the only chance she had of surviving.

The kid shifted in his grip and then one of her hands was poking him in the side of the head before pointing off to the left.

“What?” He turned, following her finger to the base of a tree, and then turned back to her and grinned. “You are my new favourite person, kid.”

The trap was more complex than anything they’d managed to piece together back at the dropship, but he got the rabbit out in mostly one piece. He was tempted to drop down and start a fire right there he was so hungry, but he was still thinking clearly enough to realize that eating right beside what was definitely a Grounder trap was not the best plan.

“Which way do you think the Dropship is?” he asked the kid, then started off in a random direction.

He was too hungry and tired to walk for long, so they stopped once they reached a little clearing with a fallen tree he could lean against.

“Alright,” he said, lowering the kid to the ground. She stood there, staring up at him, and he handed her the rabbit. “Wait here while I get some firewood, okay?”

She didn’t listen, trailing along beside him instead, one hand gripping the leg of his pants and the other clutching the rabbit.

The firewood was easy enough to find. Murphy’s pain had numbed to an annoying background noise, so he barely felt the sticks scratch against his wounds. There was some grass, too, because they needed something to catch.

And then they were back in the clearing, leaning against the log as he tried and failed to get a spark from hitting two rocks together.

The kid huffed, and Murphy sighed.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, striking the rocks again. “I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry, too.”

Fire was supposed to be his thing. He’d gotten arrested for fire. He’d been good at it on Earth, too. It was the only part of Earth Skills he’d routinely passed.

But all he could see was the Grounders lighting a fire. All he could feel was the hot coals against his feet, no way to escape them as he dangled from his arms, chained above his head to the ceiling. All he could smell was his burning flesh.

He swallowed and struck the rocks again, his hands shaking too bad for it to do any good.

Fuck. He was fucking useless right now. His body wasn’t working right. Everything hurt. He wanted nothing more than to just sleep and not have to deal with this shitty reality anymore.

And he couldn’t even start a fucking fire to cook some meat to keep a kid alive.

Murphy groaned, tossing the rocks into the dirt and pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes—only to immediately pull them away with a hiss of pain. He settled for leaning his head back on the log behind him instead, staring up at the sky.

He just needed a minute. He’d get the fire going in a minute. He just needed to relax and breathe and take a minute.

Everything would start working out in a minute.

The kid poked him in the arm and he sighed.

“Yeah, I’m getting to it,” he said, slowly straightening back up. “Just give me a minute to—oh.”

He stared at the fire for a moment, swallowing down the panic the sight of it brought. He’d never get anywhere in life if he started being terrified of everything even remotely related to anything the Grounders did to him.

It was by no means a roaring fire, but it was steady and burning and more than enough to cook a rabbit.

He turned his gaze to the kid, tucked into his side and staring up at him with her big green eyes, the rocks clutched tightly in her hands. Murphy felt like he might cry, which was bullshit. He’d cried enough this morning to last him the rest of his life.

“Good job, kid,” he said, offering her a smile. “Maybe you should be the one taking care of me.”

He picked up the rabbit and a sharp rock he’d found and set about skinning it. This was something he could do. He’d done this before, back with the panther and the deer and the other things they’d caught before he’d been banished. The Grounders had done a bit of this on him, too, the unhealed gouges still burned, but he wasn’t thinking about that.

In almost no time, they had the rabbit roasting on the fire, the promise of something to eat soon lifting his spirits just a little.

“So, kid,” he said, watching her watch him. “I don’t think I ever introduced myself. I’m Murphy. What’s your name?”

The kid didn’t say anything. She never said anything, and, really, Murphy couldn’t blame her. After what had happened to him, he was tempted to never say anything again. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it was to go through this as a kid.

“No? You don’t have a name?” He smiled at her, hoping the blood and dirt and wounds on his face didn’t make it look too scary. “Or you just don’t want to tell me? That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

He wondered if she even understood anything he was saying. Grounders could speak English. He knew that. The Grounders that tortured him knew it. The kid’s mom seemed to know it, not that they’d spoken to each other.

But did the kid?

“How old are you?” Maybe Murphy wasn’t tempted to never say anything again. Maybe being tortured made him really chatty. He didn’t know psychology. “You can show me on your fingers, if you want. See? I’m…”

Murphy trailed off, frowning, and turned his gaze away from the kid to the fire.

How old _was_ he?

He’d been sixteen when the Dropship came down. He’d still been sixteen when he was banished and kidnapped.

But how long had he been in there? How long had he been a prisoner?

Because if they’d been torturing him for six weeks, that meant he was still sixteen. But if they’d been torturing him for seven, well, that meant he’d spent his seventeenth birthday in The Room and, fuck, he’d had some bad birthdays before but that would really take the cake.

He didn’t know how long he’d been held prisoner. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever. It could’ve been anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

He’d tried keeping track at first. He’d tried. But The Room didn’t have windows so he never knew how long they kept him there, and there was no way to tell how long he was unconscious for, so he’d lost track after the first week or so.

He could feel the kid watching him. He had to give her an answer. Even if she couldn’t understand English, just sitting here and not finishing his sentence wasn’t doing either of them any good.

Was he sixteen still? He felt older than sixteen. A lot older. Years. Sixteen sounded like a kid, a baby, someone who shouldn’t have to worry about anything, someone who should be safe and happy.

“I’m seventeen,” he decided, turning back to the kid and smiling at her. It still didn’t sound as old as he felt, but be definitely hadn’t been in there for years. He would’ve known that. He held up his hands, fingers splayed. “See? Ten fingers.” He folded down a few. “And then seven more. Seventeen. How many fingers are you?”

The kid didn’t do anything but continue staring at him, and Murphy sighed, turning to check on the rabbit. Maybe she couldn’t understand him. Maybe she could but even counting on her fingers was too much. Maybe she just didn’t want to talk to _him_.

When he turned back to the kid, she was looking at her hands instead of him, and Murphy had run out of topics to keep this one sided conversation going, so he settled back against the log to stare at the fire some more. If he stared long enough, the panic would probably go away, right?

He was about to move to check the rabbit again when he felt her tapping on his arm.

“What’s up?” he asked, and she slowly raised her hand, three fingers up. He stared at her for a moment before it clicked. “Three? You’re three?” She didn’t say anything, just kept staring at him with her fingers raised, but Murphy grinned at her, the first real one he’d smiled since well before the Grounders took him. He reached out ruffling her hair. “See, kid? We’re gonna make a great team. Promise.”

He leaned forward, then, to check on the rabbit. He was starving and impatient and he just wanted to eat.

But, before he reached it, a hand gripped his hair and he was yanked back with a yelp of pain, and a knife pressed against his throat.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Of course they’d been followed. Of course the Grounders had been able to track them down. He’d done absolutely nothing to cover their tracks and now they were just sitting out here in the open because he was a fucking idiot. They were going to take them back to the prison and they’d drag him into The Room and he wouldn’t leave it alive. He was going to die, and he was dragging the kid down with him. Fuck, fuck, fu—

“Give me everything you own, and you’ll get to leave here with your life.”

Huh. They were being robbed. Okay. Still not good but so fucking much better than being dragged back to prison.

The person holding him yanked on his hair when he didn’t say anything, and Murphy hissed in pain as tears welled in his eyes. The robber wasn’t even tugging that hard, he was just already in so much pain.

The kid was screaming and clawing at his arm. There was a Grounder with a sword and a scarf covering his face on the other side of the fire. The Grounder holding him had her face near his ear, her arm holding the knife keeping her pressed up against him.

“We don’t have anything,” he said, the words more rushed and desperate than he would’ve wanted to sound while being robbed at knife point. “We don’t even have shoes. Just the rabbit. You can take that, but we haven’t eaten in days and—”

He cut himself off as the Grounder holding him leaned forward and he got a look at her face. Her really pretty face with swooping tattoos around her eyes and— _what the fuck, Murphy? She’s holding a fucking knife to your throat._

She cocked her head and frowned at him before turning away and having a quick conversation in Grounder with her friend. And then she turned back to him with a raised brow and dropped the knife.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

And that was how Murphy ended up sharing the rabbit he’d found and three others with a couple of Grounders.

Maybe Grounders weren’t all bad. Emori and Otan, a brother and sister duo who were in the area to “gather supplies”—which Murphy was pretty sure meant rob people blind and then disappear back to wherever they keep all their stolen stuff—they were pretty nice. Sure, they’d started off with a knife to his throat, but nobody was perfect. And it didn’t seem like the knife was going to make another appearance anytime soon, which was a plus.

The kid was a little more apprehensive, curled into his side and not taking her eyes off of either of them, but Murphy was pretty confident that they’d have killed them already if they were going to.

“So, John from the sky,” Emori started. He’d told her his name was John because she was pretty and she was being nice to him and he was a loser and pathetic, which all meant that he wasn’t thinking straight and was already halfway in love with her. He was also half in love with Otan, who was also nice and so were his eyes, which were really the only part of him Murphy could see. Fuck, he was pathetic, wasn’t he? Who falls in love with the first people they meet just because they’re nice? “You’ve heard our story. What’s yours?”

Murphy swallowed, turning away from her to stare down at the hunk of meat in his hands. It was taking all his control to not just shovel it into his mouth like a wild animal who hadn’t eaten in weeks, the way he’d taken to eating his miniscule bits of food in the prison. He could at least try to not look completely pathetic.

“Got taken prisoner,” he said, shrugging like it was nothing. “Got tortured for a while and then I escaped and took the kid with me. Now we’re heading back to the rest of my people.” _And hoping they don’t kill us just for showing up_ was silently added on. They definitely already thought he was pathetic. No need to make their opinion of him even worse.

It must’ve shown on his face that he didn’t want to talk about himself anymore, because Emori and Otan shared a look and then changed the subject.

“What’s her name?” Otan asked, nodding at the kid.

Murphy nudged her. “You gonna introduce yourself?” The kid didn’t answer, just moved further under his arm and shoved the last of her meat into her mouth. Murphy turned back to the Grounders and shrugged. “She’s not talking. I don’t know, either.”

Emori and Otan didn’t stay long. They couldn’t, as Otan put it, not long after the rabbits were gone.

“We’ve got more stops before we have to head back.”

Murphy swallowed, a bit of panic at being alone bubbling up inside him. “Can we come?” he asked, and Emori and Otan’s eyes shot his way.

“You want to come with us?” Emori asked slowly, her brows furrowing. “What about going back to your people?”

Fuck, he had said that, hadn’t he?

“They banished me,” he admitted, staring at the coals from the fire. “Said they’d kill me if I showed my face again. I’ve just been hoping they’ve changed their mind, cause I don’t exactly have another choice.” He risked a glance up, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate. “Unless we go with you?”

“We live in the Dead Zone, John,” Emori told him, offering him a smile. “Does that sound like somewhere you should take a kid?”

It didn’t. Anywhere with _dead_ in the name wasn’t anywhere anyone should live, let alone a kid.

Otan muttered something in Grounder under his breath, something that made Emori chuck a stick at him.

“Trust me,” she said, turning back to Murphy. “As someone who grew up in the Dead Zone. It’s not somewhere you want to take a kid if you can help it.”

Murphy sighed, accepting defeat. Not that he’d really expected them to let him and the kid come. They didn’t exactly look like they were going to live much longer.

“Do you know where I’m going, then?” he asked, glancing around the clearing. “I don’t even know which direction our camp is.”

They did, in fact, know the general direction of the Dropship.

“It should only be a couple hours walk,” Otan said. “Maybe a few more, with your injuries, but I think you should be able to get there by dark.”

Emori helped him stand, which he was grateful for. He wasn’t sure whether he’d have had the strength to pull himself up off the ground.

“Well,” he said, adjusting the kid on his hip and trying to find the position where she was touching the least of his injuries. It still fucking hurt. “If you’re ever near the Dropship, hit me up. Maybe I won’t be dead yet.”

Emori gave a half laugh for his half joke. “Maybe you’ll actually have stuff for us to rob you of.”

Murphy snorted, not quite a laugh for not quite a joke.

And then Emori and Otan were headed off into the woods, probably to rob someone.

Murphy sighed and adjusted the kid again. The brief amount of peace he’d felt with Emori and Otan around was already fading, the not unfounded paranoia that Grounders would jump out at any minute and drag him back to the prison returning.

“We’re good,” he told the kid, forcing himself to start hobbling in the direction they’d been pointed in. “We’re gonna be fine.”

He chatted to himself and the kid as he walked, trying to distract himself from the never-ending forest surrounding them on all sides and the pain that shot through him with every step. It was fine. It was okay. Everything was going to be fine.

They’d make it to the Dropship without anything happening. Clarke and Bellamy will have figured out that they were the ones in the wrong, and they’d apologize for hanging him and then banishing him and getting him tortured and they’d let him back into camp. Or, at the very least, they’d see how pathetic he looked and that would change their minds. Either way, they’d let him back into the camp and let him live and Clarke would look over his injuries and tell him he wasn’t going to get an infection and die.

And then he and the kid would live happily ever after in the relative safety of camp while Bellamy led a bunch of teenagers to track down and kill the Grounders that did this to him.

He could dream, at least.

In reality, Clarke would probably be able to convince Bellamy to let them stay until they were healed, and then they’d be back out in the woods again. But he could work with that. He was pretty fucking injured. He could work out what he was going to do after while he healed.

And, worse comes to worse, they kill him but keep the kid safe. Sure, he’d be dead and that would suck, but being alive right now wasn’t exactly paradise. There was no way they’d kill the kid, though. Not when they were so hell bent on keeping Charlotte from facing what had been decided to be the consequences to murder just five minutes before. Charlotte was four times the kid’s age. She would be safe, and that was what was important.

The walk was more than a couple of hours. He might’ve been on the way to being in love with Otan, but the dude was a fucking liar.

They’d only stopped a few times because Murphy was pretty sure he was getting close to the point where stopping would mean not being able to start moving again. But he had to pee, occasionally, and the kid had taken to poking him in the cheek whenever she had to, so they had to make a few stops.

It was dark now, almost too dark to see anything. His injuries hurt so much that he could barely move, pulling himself from tree to tree. He was hungry again. The rabbit had taken the worst off the starvation, but it had been hours.

There wasn’t much of a chance that they’d luck out and find another trap. He knew that. Getting to the Dropship meant food. It meant not having to walk anymore. It meant getting to sleep.

_If he could just…keep…moving._

They could set up camp for the night. Laying down under a tree sounded like a pretty good idea right now.

But if he went to sleep, would he wake up again?

He took another step, grabbing onto another tree.

The kid whined softly, but Murphy didn’t have the energy to comfort her.

They travelled in the darkness for another year, and then he saw something.

A light.

Someone was there.

He was too tired to panic, too tired to wonder if it was friend or foe, if there was anyone even out there that he could count as a friend.

So he moved to the next tree.

The someone with the light said something, and another someone laughed. Murphy couldn’t understand them, couldn’t make his brain focus on anything other than the pain and taking one more step to process the words, but it was English. Not only was it English, but it was teenagers.

Had they made it?

He pulled himself to the next tree, but something on the ground made him stumble and fall, a clanging noise echoing through the forest. His face smashed into the dirt, but he barely felt it. Not over the pain that was already radiating through him.

He thought about getting up again, but he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t listen, and his vision was already fading around the edges.

“Don’t worry, kid,” he mumbled against his dirt pillow. “We’ll get there in the morning.”

He regained consciousness to the sound of the kid screaming.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “Go back to sleep.”

And then someone was grabbing his arm, turning him over, and he was gripping the kid closer to him and backing away from whoever had found them. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t fucking good. He couldn’t go back to that prison. He _couldn’t_.

“Holy shit,” someone said, and a vague part of his mind that wasn’t in full panic recognized the voice from lifetimes ago. Someone else moved closer, a torch swinging over them—the fire was too bright, too close, too much—and Murphy tightened his hold on the still screaming kid, pushing himself further and further, until he hit a tree, until he couldn’t move anymore.

“Murphy?” the same someone said, like she couldn’t believe it was actually him, and his eyes snapped to her face. It took a moment, the light of the torch wasn’t that much and he’d been with the Grounders for far longer than he’d been at the Dropship, but he managed to place her face.

The torch swung closer, and Murphy flinched.

“You’re still alive,” Octavia said, almost-but-not-quite laughing as she shook her head. The torch moved again and so did her eyes. “Where’d you get a kid?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chances of another chapter coming next week are super low. This one only came because I'd written like 90% of it before I posted chapter 1 and then I finished the rest the other day and decided to wait to post it. But my semester is insane and I've got other things to write (mostly academic but also darling). But I'll try not to take too long!
> 
> Not a whole ton went down in this chapter but I promise the real action starts in the next one.
> 
> I am still super down to hear what you want to happen in this chapter because I only have like two more chapters of plot planned out and then I'll be winging it, so let me know if you have any ideas or anything you want!
> 
> Comments and kudos write my papers and pass my courses!
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr at probably-voldemort!
> 
> See you next time!

**Author's Note:**

> There's chapter one! It was more of a prologue than anything, but I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> The kid doesn't have a name yet cause I haven't given her a name yet, so if you have suggestions you can leave those in the comments! I am also taking suggestions on things you think would be cool to go into this fic because like I said I have nothing other than the general idea of season 1 Murphy raising a three year old and some more specific scenes. Are there ships you want to see? Dynamics? Parts of canon you want me to fit into this rework? I am super open to suggestions
> 
> Thanks for reading! Leave me some kudos and comments if you liked it!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at probably-voldemort!


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